Samsung Surpassed P&G As The World’s Largest Advertiser

Samsung electronics just became the world’s spendiest advertiser according to a recent report released by Ad Age. As shown in the statistic, the company which has a $300 billion market cap, spent more than $11.2 billion on advertising, promotion and sales programs in the last 12 months. While compared its expenditure trend to that of a competitor, the number for P&G is around $10.5 billion.

The Statistical Data of Adage

Most of Samsung's spending may have been for bad press handling, especially after the fire-prone Galaxy Note 7 problem which dragged the company's mobile earnings to their lowest level in nearly eight years. Although there is no definite proof, analysts state that the disappointing sales of Galaxy S9 might also be the cause of the increase in advertising, promotion and sales programs costs of Samsung. Not long ago, in the smartphone war versus Apple,  Samsung published three new ads designed to put their phones against Apple's new iPhones.

However, Samsung is not the only company to put billion dollars into advertising and marketing cost. In China, analysts said that this field will continue to be a fight between Alibaba and Tencent as both companies are focusing on the Southeast Asian and the Indian markets. According to reports, Alibaba Group Holding increased its advertising expenditure in 2017 to $ 2.7 billion in 2017, more than doubling compared to the previous year.  And its competitor, Tencent Holdings also increased its advertising cost in 2017 to $ 2 billion to intensify advertising and marketing, which was almost twice the amount compared to the same period in 2016.

According to Adage, in the top 100, there are 47 firms from North America, 31 from Europe as well as 22 from Asia. The United States heads the list of the companies spending the most of marketing, with 44 companies. This was followed by Japan (14), Germany (10) and France (9).

Rounding out the list of top 10 are Alibaba, Alphabet, Amazon, Netflix, Tencent and five others. Moreover, according to official data, Alphabet, Netflix, and Amazon have all risen their expenditure in 2017 to 32%, 29%, and 26% respectively.